Physics, or Bug? 0.o

[GarrisonChisholm]

Greetings all.  I noticed a rather strange (and briefly alarming) occurrence during my game Monday night, and wanted to ask for input on what might be going on.  Also, please note I am still playing v 1.02 by choice (and always immediately turning off Temperature Gauges to work around the memory leak), simply because I can't abide the universe's physics changing mid-game.  I realize I am intentionally using Nuclear Engines with a pre-radiator game.

I had launched my 100+ tons Duna lander (w/ 8 Nuc engines) into low Duna orbit, and then let it be while I waited for the transfer window to Kerbin.  After ~ 100 days I returned to the ship, finding it on the dark side of Duna.  It was obviously on the dark side, because in the dark the WHOLE SHIP was glowing cherry red.  Every thermometer on the vessel was reading +900 degrees.  I watched the temperature climb, expecting that after an orbit or two it would hit 1000 and just explode.

However, as soon as the ship orbited into Sunlight, the temperature immediately started falling.  I was later able to burn out of orbit, and am on my way back home.

My question is, is there some aspect of the ship's exposure to sunlight that could rationally explain what I witnessed, or is this just an earlier version bug?

My initial search for a known bug did not yield an obvious hit.

(I do have pictures, hopefully I will have time to post later this week in the "What did you do Today" thread)

[Snark]

Sounds like a bug to me, though I do have to admit that mainly what I heard you say was "...blah blah blah not current KSP version blah blah blah..." and my brain kinda stopped processing further input past that point. 

Kidding aside, I see no legitimate reason why it would do that, so call it a bug.  That said, though... even if it's a bug, "so what?" is a legitimate question.  It's not as if it's worth reporting, since no one can fix 1.0.2 at this point.  If you're interested and motivated, you could try running that same .sfs file through 1.0.5 and see whether the same problem happens, because then you'll have something a bit more relevant to what's currently going on in KSP-land.

Or, even better, try it out in KSP 1.1 as soon as you have it available (now, or when the actual release happens) to see if it's still reproducible.

I think a lot of the water that has gone under the bridge since 1.0.2 involved fixes to the thermal system, so I'm not at all surprised if you're seeing some thermal weirdness.

[GarrisonChisholm]

That's a very fair answer, and I appreciate such a swift reply.  Yes, I was not so much concerned with finding a bug that needed fixing in an old version of the game, but rather just clarification on what I was seeing.
 

Thank you!

[Malich]

Does the ship have either an ISRU or a nuclear reactor on board?

There is an ISRU bug that applies a 10000K temperature to the ship when you return to it / reach the 2.3km physic range.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/130502-orbital-isru-exploding-on-encounter/

See here

 

[GarrisonChisholm]

Very interesting, but no, I have no ISRU.  It has 8 Nerva Engines, but no ISRU.  It can get down to land and then return to orbit and Kerbin on internal only.

...& I can't seem to get Imgur to cooperate today, but here is a link to my "What did you do today?" post with images;